


A walk

by oswinious



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, Pre-Revolution, shada - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:01:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28482828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oswinious/pseuds/oswinious
Summary: A little one shot while we wait for Revolution! Enjoy the ep tonight, guys xx
Relationships: The Doctor/Yasmin Khan, Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	A walk

The Doctor was lying on what was going to be her bed, her single source of comfort for the rest of eternity. What did “eternity” even mean? It meant infinity and perpetuity. It meant endlessness and timelessness.

_Perpetuity; like her sentence._

_Timelessness; timeless, like herself._

But what’s the point of being timeless when you’re perpetually stuck between four walls?

The Doctor sighed profoundly, an almost guttural sound coming out of her weakened body. Instead of staring at the ceiling – oh, how she wished to shatter the thing, – she closed her eyes. 

Her mind could’ve travelled anywhere else in the universe, but she found herself transported to her beloved TARDIS. She could almost hear the ship’s wheezes, overwhelming her senses and making her believe she had physically been taken away from her dreadful predicament.

_Her hands brushed the console, flipping switches and spinning a smaller version of her ship._

_“Hello, Doctor,” a voice called out in the distance._

_“Please,” the Doctor whispered. “Not you.”_

_The Doctor turned around to find brown eyes staring back at her, right into her soul. Wanting, longing eyes._

_“Not me? What do you mean?”_

_She couldn’t bear to look at her, the Earthling who had stolen her heart. It hurt too much. These young eyes had seen so many things in their very short life; the Doctor didn’t want to add more misery to that pain. Yet, the brown eyed girl approached tentatively. The Doctor wanted to run away, but she was glued there, entranced by the young woman, against her better judgement._

_“I’ll find you. I promise you.”_

_“You can’t promise something you can’t accomplish,” the Doctor replied harshly. “You’re only an illusion. Soon, you’ll walk away and leave me.”_

_“Like you left me, Doctor,” Yaz replied, her voice stern and her eyes empty – a sight the Doctor dreaded to see._

_“I didn’t. Well, I did. But I did it_ for _you,” the Doctor begged. “I never wanted to hurt you.”_

And then, reality came crashing back. A Judoon guard knocked on the cell door loudly, waking the Time Lord from her so-called underserved slumber.

“Not the time to rest, Time Lord. Time to walk around the prison ground for a few revolutions,” the Judoon said.

“I’m no Time Lord,” The Doctor replied.

“I don’t care, walk.”

The guard entered her room and lifted her by the collar of her deep red boiler suit adorned with Old High Gallifreyan symbols: “The Timeless must be held captive for as long as the Universe shall grow,” it read. But the Doctor knew that the Universe, the one she had saved countless time, would grow eternally, even without her. It was her only certainty; it was the curse of whoever she was. She wasn’t a necessity to the Universe’s ability to prevail. She was only a stranded traveler, hopeless and destroyed by layers of unknown realities she could never be a part of, in one Universe or another. Time had been converging towards her for so long, and now it was drifting away. 

A revolution on Shada was the equivalent of a whole day on Earth. Every few revolutions, the guards would allow – or rather, force – the Doctor to walk around the prison planet. There was no yard to enjoy, no sky to adore, only iron walls and cells filled with her enemies.

The enemies of the Timeless, the guards called them. As if that whole prison had been built for her sole penance.

Her feet were heavy with the weight of the tallies accumulating on her cell walls as she walked. The near-infinite floors of the prison would take more than a couple revolutions to roam through, that was for sure.

But she had a friend with her. An unwanted friend, because seeing her kept bringing her back to the adventures that would never be, but a friend, nonetheless.

Invisible to the rest of the world, the brown eyed girl would always stay by her side as she moved forward towards her aimless goal.

_“Stay strong, Doctor. People are waiting for you,” the voice said, making her presence known._

“I can’t stay strong without you, Yaz.”

 _“But I_ am _here. Inside those two hearts of yours, living inside that silly brain and traveling through the endless eternity with you.”_

“Not enough,” the Doctor muttered, attracting glares from the other inhabitants of Shada.

_“Hope prevails. Love prevails, Time Lord.”_

“I’m no Time Lord.”

 _“No,” the imaginary woman said. “You’re_ the _Time Lord, the one we need. The one_ I _need.”_

Revolutions came and went, but her dearest Yasmin Khan stayed by her side every step of the way. When she finally made it back to her cell, she added yet another tally to her wall. A tally, a walk around the prison. She leaned on the wall, letting herself slide to the ground.

“Stay strong... People waiting for you,” she whispered.


End file.
